Cypher
Douglas felt very out of place amongst his team-mates, feeling as though his mutation was useless. Warlock's arrival proved him wrong as only he could understand the gentle alien and their friendship would come to mean a lot to him. Selfless and brave, he sacrificed his life to save Kitty and his death affected the X-Family for a long time. Resurrected intermittently, the last time left him with extra powers, causing him to become semi-clairvoyant and telepathic and intensifying his mutation to the point where he translates everything around him as language. Origin When Kitty Pryde moved to New York she attended Stevie Hunter's dance lessons. It was considered a good influence that she should meet & befriend other kids her age. One of those friends was Douglas Ramsey. It just so happened that Doug also happened to be a computer genius, on a par with Kitty's own intellect. So when she wasn't caught up in the X-Men's fights, Kitty began to hang out with Doug. Neither of them realized that Doug's natural gift for computers was due to his mutant ability to understand and communicate in any language. On one occasion they were using the computers at Doug's house to hack into something Top Secret. Kitty used Doug's natural ability to hack into the government computers at Project: Wideawake and activated a Sentinel. Doug innocently joked that he didn't want to know what she'd done. Kitty's interference had forced Henry Peter Gyrich & Sebastian Shaw to destroy the activated Sentinel, thereby wasting millions of dollars worth of investment. Unaware of the chaos he'd help to cause, Doug treated Kitty to snacks and soda in the kitchen, but Professor Xavier sent an angry telepathic message to her reminding Kitty of her training sessions. Doug said a hurried goodbye to Kitty as she ran out the door, but he was unaware of the real reason that she was in a rush. Powers and Abilities Cypher was a mutant with a superhuman facility for translating languages, spoken or written, human or alien in origin. His superhuman skill also extended to his great facility in deciphering codes and computer languages. Cypher's skills were such that he was once able to make great headway in translating the written language of an extraterrestrial race in a matter of minutes. Cypher's mutant talent for translating differed from the translating ability that a human who is a genius in this field, yet not a mutant, possesses, even though both people might achieve the same results with any given translation problem. Cypher's mutant talent was an intuitive one which worked on a subconscious level, and which may in part be related to telepathy. A non-mutant human, even a genius, would have to work out a translation consciously, step by step. Rather than working the problem out step by step, in his conscious mind, Cypher instead subconsciously solved the problem. Hence, Cypher could reach the correct solution by means that appeared to be leaps of logic, and he himself may not have been consciously aware of the entire process by which he reached the right answer. Other abilities: Aided by his unusual facility with computer languages, Cypher became an expert at working with computer software. He was brilliant at working with computer programs. Cypher received a good deal of athletic training as a member of the New Mutants, and was a fair hand-to-hand combatant. But because his mutant ability did not lend itself to physical battle, he was not given as intensive a program of physical training as the rest of the New Mutants. Cypher has the superhuman ability to translate any language in any form whether it is spoken or written regardless of its origin of being natural or extraterrestrial. Cypher performs this ability easily without having a hard time on picking the appropriate words to use. Furthermore, Cypher can also decode computer languages. This incredible translation allows him to easily get the thought of the message no matter what kind of language has been used. As of recently he is able to know when reality is warped due to the language of actuality, allowing him to know when someone has warped reality to hide themselves. This power was originally not as useful in times of battle but Cypher was competent in using weapons for fighting and his best friend Warlock was always on his side for assistance. This changed when he came back from the dead. Overriding Master Mold After being resurrected Cypher's abilities either expanded or were just finally fully realized. Cypher's ability to understand all language has been incorporated into the ability to understand the meaning conveyed by all things. Cypher now sees everything as a language, allowing him to understand and manipulate pretty much any system. He has shown the ability to read body language; decode hidden messages in intonation and inflection of speech (revealing the inner monologues of individuals); decode combat viewing a fight as a language to be interpreted, allowing him to defeat all the New Mutants at once; decipher and manipulate data in a manner that rivals hypercomputers such as Master Mold. The true limits of how he can apply his new ability are unknown. Category:Protagonists Category:X-Men